Contagious (39 page)

“I . . . I can’t, Dew. I can’t face them.”
“You can,” Dew said. “I’m not much for emotional stuff, kid. But I got to tell you, I think you’re the toughest bastard I’ve ever met. The shit you’ve fought through would have broken guys like Baum and Milner, probably even guys like me. You have a warrior’s soul, Perry. You’ve got my
respect.
I will fight with you against this shit, and I will die before I let anything get you. Do you understand that?”
Dew’s eyes burned with intensity. Perry wasn’t much for emotional stuff, either, but Dew’s words kicked up a knot in the back of his throat. Bill Miller was the only guy who’d ever stood by him like that. So had Perry’s father, in his own fucked-up way. But Bill was dead. So was Daddy.
“I can see you’re about to sob like a little girl,” Dew said, “so let’s get this conversation out of borderline-gay land and move it back to practicality. You’re scared of what these things might make you do, but I
know
you can beat them. In fact, I’m willing to bet my life on that. So here’s your present.”
Dew reached into his shoulder holster, pulled out his .45 and handed it to Perry butt-first.
Perry looked at it. “You want me to shoot my present?”
“No, college boy, this
is
your present.”
Perry stared at the scratched weapon. It seemed to glow with well-oiled love. Dew had shot Perry in the shoulder with that gun. And in the knee.
Dew had carried that .45 in Vietnam, and every day since.
This wasn’t just a
present.
Perry was a worthless psycho, a failure. He didn’t deserve something this significant.
“I can’t take it,” Perry said. “You’ve had that for like thirty years.”
Dew nodded. “That’s long enough, I think. It’s yours now. It’s fired thousands of rounds without a problem. Guaranteed to work. So you take this gun. You go in there, and you sack up. You do what you have to do, no matter how scared you are. And if you can’t take them jabbering in your head, you’ve got my permission to send them back to whatever hell they come from.”
Perry reached out and took the gun. The grip felt cold, worn and smooth.
“Yeah, it’s loaded,” Dew said. He extended one finger and gently moved the barrel away from his chest. “So how about trying not to kill me by fucking accident, okay?”
Perry laughed. It sounded strange to him. He looked at the gun, then looked at Dew.
“Let me spell it out for you,” Dew said. “The Jewell family has been at large for at least thirty-six hours. They could be in any of two dozen states, even Canada. Maybe they already popped and their hatchlings are building a gate as we speak. We also have a second strain of infection that’s contagious. We’re out of time. We need to find the Jewells. We need to find that gate. So I’m only going to ask you one more time—do you want to go in that trailer and face these things that have fucked you right in the ass, or do you want to go hide your head for the rest of your life? My respect you’ve got, but my time? I don’t have any left. You either step up, right now, or you just leave and let me do what needs to be done.”
Dew was on his side, but Dew also had a job to do. Perry understood—he was either part of that job, or Dew wanted him gone.
Perry felt like maybe, just maybe, he actually did deserve some respect. He felt human again, and there was only one person responsible for that.
His friend, Dew Phillips.
“Whatever you need,” Perry said. “I’ve got your back, whatever it takes.
Let’s get this over with.”
PERRY PULLS THE TRIGGER
Before they went in, Dew gave Perry a side holster for the .45. He also gave him four full magazines, which fit into little canvas pouches fixed to the holster’s straps. At seven rounds a magazine, that gave him a total of thirty-five rounds. Not that any amount of bullets could make him feel safe.
Perry walked into Trailer B, Dew right behind him. They both wore biohazard suits. Perry’s felt even more suffocating than before. This was it, his dramatic showdown with the monsters—he felt as if the trailer should have been poorly lit, half dark, maybe a bulb or two flickering sci-fi movie style, but everything was bright-white as fuck. The first thing he saw was the empty containment cell. Gitsh and Marcus must have hosed it down or something, as all of Bernadette’s blood was gone.
Perry turned left, toward the back, toward the body lockers. On the floor in front of those lockers sat three small glass cages, each a two-foot cube.
Inside those cages, he saw them.
They saw him.
Sonofabitch
.
Things just like this would have ripped out of his body if he hadn’t destroyed them first, if he hadn’t cut up the Magnificent Seven. They would have killed him just like Fatty Patty’s triangles killed her. That’s how close he’d come to death. His body shook. He forced himself to look at the .45, to make sure the safety was on—he was trembling so bad he might squeeze the trigger without even knowing it.
“Easy, kid,” Dew said as he came around to stand on Perry’s left, close to the gun hand. “Just breathe. They can’t get out of those cages. You’re in control.”
We will
kill you.
The hatchlings had grown massively since tearing out of Bernadette Smith’s body the day before. Then their triangular bodies had been maybe an inch from top to bottom—now they were a foot high or more. Each tentacle-leg looked as thick as a fat baby’s arm, long and flexible, full of speed and strength.
Kill you
kill you killyoukillyou.
Their eyes
stared
at him, all black and shiny and full of hate, one vertical eye on each of their three pyramid sides.
His hand tightened on the gun.
Yessss, use
the gun. Kill the man.
“Perry, are you hearing them?”
Perry nodded.
Shoot him.
Shoot him, shoot him shoothimshoothim.
Their words meant nothing, the delusional jibber-jabber of pure evil. The hatchlings were just worker ants—Chelsea was the queen.
“Where is she?” Perry said.
Silence.
“Tell Chelsea I’m coming for her,” Perry said. “Tell her I’m going to help her.”
He still felt that grayness, that fuzziness, although he could hear these hatchlings clear as day. But
just
them. Beyond them, nothing. Maybe he could antagonize them, get them to connect to Chelsea. They were like antennae into the larger network, a way to punch through the jamming if only Chelsea would do her part.
He is
the Columbo, kill him kill him now killllhimmmmm.
“Dew, they want me to kill you,” Perry said. “Why don’t you say hi?”
“My name is Dew Phillips. I have the authority to speak on behalf of the president of the United States of America. Cease your hostile actions, and we can negotiate. What is it you want?”
The hatchlings stopped staring at Perry. Instead, they stared at Dew.
Kill him.
“What did they say?”
“They still want me to kill you,” Perry said. “They don’t have much of a vocabulary, I’m afraid.”
Dew nodded. “First of all, you nasty bastards are the ugliest pieces of shit I have ever seen.” His voice built in intensity, a hoarse gravel coloring his words. “I don’t know if you little fuck-stains can think for yourselves, but I will tell you that my patience is already gone. Now, last chance . . . what do you want?”
We want
to kill you. We want to kill you all. Kill Columbo, kill him nowwww!
“More of the same?” Dew asked.
Perry nodded.
“Shoot one,” Dew said.
Perry turned to look at Dew. “What?”
“Shoot one of these fucking things.”
No! Shoot
him shoothimshoothim shoot yourself do it doitdoit
“Perry, you need to show these things who’s boss,” Dew said. “You’ve got to show them some discipline.”
Yes.
Discipline.
These things had fucked with a Dawsey, and you did
not
fuck with a Dawsey. Perry raised the gun. He noticed that his hand wasn’t shaking anymore.
Nonononononono
He emptied the clip into the middle cage. Bullets punched through the thick glass in spiderweb-crack splashes and shredded the hatchling’s plasticine body. Seven .45-caliber bullets, all direct hits. The creature twitched a little, spasming amid splatters of purple fluid before it slumped, motionless.
Perry felt the adrenaline gush through his chest, felt a tingle in his fingers and toes. It felt like crushing a quarterback. Oh, God, did that ever feel
good.
The two remaining hatchlings flailed inside their cages, trying to get away. They slammed themselves against the glass over and over, tentacle-legs whipping so fast he could barely make them out.
“What do you think, kid?” Dew said. “How did that feel?”
“My freshman year we were at Notre Dome,” Perry said. “I blindsided Tommy Pillson, knocked him out cold, caused a fumble that I ran back for a touchdown. The whole stadium booed me. Pillson had a concussion. I ended his season. They showed the hit over and over again on ESPN. Chris Berman said I was
made of mean
. On national TV, said I was
made of mean
. And that feeling was nothing compared to this.”
Dew smiled and nodded. “Now you’re getting it. Let them ponder what just happened. We’ll come back later and see if we can make any progress.”
“Do we have to kill another one?”
Dew shrugged. “One can always dream. I imagine that’s enough personal growth for one day. Come on,
made of mean
, you need a beer.”
DANDELIONS
Margaret stared at the flat-panel monitor mounted on the wall of the narrow autopsy room. The picture showed a split screen of two microscopes, the right side containing the powder from one of John Doe’s pustules, the left containing a tissue sample from Officer Sanchez’s hand.
“Oh man,” Dan said. “That is so totally fucked up.”
The sample from Officer Sanchez’s hand showed motion similar to what she’d seen in Betty Jewell’s blackened facial sore before the girl killed Amos. It looked like a moving, crawling nerve cell. Who knew how many of those things were in Sanchez’s system, creeping toward his brain. Maybe they were already there.
The samples from John Doe’s pustules looked similar, but different in one key way. Where the crawling nerve cell looked flexible and streamlined, John Doe’s pollen looked fuzzy. It moved only when it landed on something, and then with an awkward stiffness that spoke of an internal rigidity.
Under high magnification she saw the cause of that fuzziness—hundreds of tiny cilia-like hairs sticking out from the stiff dendrites. It reminded Margaret of a fluffy white dandelion seed.
“So this is how it spreads,” she said. “It rides air currents until it lands on a host.”
“Then it burrows in somehow,” Dan said. “And once under the skin, it becomes a crawler just like the one on the left. Good God, what would the range be on this thing?”
Margaret didn’t want to consider the answer, but she already knew it. “Depends on the winds,” she said. To think that the difference between a localized infection and a pandemic might be nothing more than a good, strong breeze . . .
She wished Amos were with her. He was the parasitologist. He would have quickly created working theories on range and contagion mechanics. But Amos was gone, gone because of the very things that moved up there on the screen.
“Let’s run the tests now,” she said. “Give me all the samples.”
Dan went to the wall screen and typed in commands. The flat-panel’s image changed from one set of side-by-side pictures to twenty-five sets, five rows of five spreading a checkerboard across the screen.
They had identified twenty-five possible cures to kill the crawlers. Now they could try all of them on crawlers and dandelion seeds at the same time.
Multiple caustic solutions, heat, cold, antibiotics, Sanchez’s own white blood cells and six kinds of chemicals that might damage the cytoskeletal structures.
Somewhere in those twenty-five options was a way to save Officer Sanchez and stop this whole thing in its tracks.
There had to be.
“All right,” Margaret said. “Let’s find out what kills these little bastards.”
OGDEN SEES TRAILERS
Charlie Ogden watched the Winnebago’s little TV. Every word the newscaster said seemed to increase his anger, his desire to kill the enemies of God. If only he’d arrived sooner, stopped Jenkins from making that McDonald’s run.
“This is footage from this morning,” the newscaster said. “Police were investigating two bodies found on Orleans Street. We have unconfirmed reports that one or both of these bodies had the flesh-eating bacteria that has been found in several places in Michigan, including Gaylord, where it caused at least two deaths. Homeland Security has elevated the alert status to orange, although they say there is no evidence of terrorist involvement. The no-fly zone over Detroit is still in effect, and we will bring you live aerial pictures as soon as that ban is lifted.”
Ogden turned off the volume. He just stared at the image of Orleans Street, dozens of police, white CDC vans, and two semi trailers.
Chelsea’s lovely voice in his head:
Why does this make you so angry?
He pointed to the screen, his fingertip tracing an oily mark on the glass.
“These two trailers,” Ogden said. “It means they found Jenkins. The people in those trailers, Chelsea . . . they work for the devil.”
Are they coming for us?
Not yet. They couldn’t. Sending troops to a town like Gaylord was one thing; a major city was a different story.
“I think we have enough time,” Ogden said. “We just have to make sure we stick to the timeline. You’re sure the gate will open exactly when you say it will?”
When Mickey’s big hand is on three and his little hand is on one.
Thirteen-fifteen. Just eighteen hours away.
That spot is only a few blocks from here. If the trailers make you angry, destroy them.
“They moved them,” Ogden nodded. “I sent Sergeant Major Mazagatti out in street clothes, and the trailers are gone. They have to be around here somewhere, but we can’t send people out to search. It’s too risky.
The longer we stay quiet and unnoticed, the better.”
You’re so smart, General.
He felt his face flush red. “Thank you, Chelsea.”
But tomorrow, once things begin, we should find the trailers and kill the people inside.
Ogden nodded. “Absolutely, Chelsea. I’ll send Mazagatti and my personal guard to make sure it happens. We just have to find them first.”
MACH 10
Captain Patrick “P. J.” Lindeman felt ridiculous G-forces smash him into his seat, and he wondered if his ass would explode.